


Phantom

by Atticwright



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Immediately post-Wonderland, Memory Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:28:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25723600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atticwright/pseuds/Atticwright
Summary: A short drabble. Magnus tries to have a conversation with the Red Robe while camping on the road to the cave.
Relationships: Barry Bluejeans & Magnus Burnsides
Kudos: 27





	Phantom

Magnus can’t sleep in his mannequin body. But he feels like he’s been dozing, on and off, throughout the day’s journey, because he keeps dreaming. He keeps recalling the red-dyed wool of a stiff, new cloak, the smell of a favorite meal in a cramped kitchen, the sun glinting off a silver streak in the sky. He comes to and he’s sat in front of a campfire. This place is familiar too- more recent. Taako and Merle snore on the ground nearby, possibly in the same spots they did a year and a half ago, when they first met. But not when they first met. When they first met was farther away.

The Red Robe sits opposite him, behind the fire. 

“Uh,” Magnus says. “Are you awake?”

His voice hisses from the shadow inside his hood. “I don’t sleep.”

“Cool. So you’ve just been... staring at me this whole time. Cool, cool.” Magnus touches his wooden hands together, watching himself, unfeeling. He thinks of turning into white stone.

“Why am I remembering things?” he asks the Red Robe.

The phantom is still. After a moment he says, “Your body forgot. But you’re not in your body anymore.”

Magnus considers this. That makes sense, maybe. He looks at Taako and Merle. “Will they remember?”

“If we’re successful, tomorrow.”

He turns back and studies him, longer than he has ever had the chance to study him. He thinks he feels a warmth- not a physical warmth, but a comfortable settling, inside, in himself. He’s sorry it took so long for them to hang out. He wishes the Red Robe had joined them sooner. It’s been too long.

“Were...Were we...friends?” he asks.

The Red Robe sits, returning his gaze, not breathing, like a shadow, like a man. “Try not to think about it.” He looks down into the fire, but then, tilts up toward him, so slightly, hesitantly. Magnus imagines blue eyes peeking from under a draped woolen hood.

“...We were.” Then the Red Robe is silent again.

**Author's Note:**

> A scene I've had in my head for a while! Just some good remembering angst.


End file.
